Armine Yalnizyan

Across the nation, talk of minimum wages and their impact is always the stuff of vigorous debate. This month it was the focus of an episode of CBC Radio's Cross Country Checkup with new host Duncan McCue from 4-6 p.m. EST. I was asked to kick off the discussion, which was both rich with experience and nuanced with different perspective. It's available here, in case you missed it.

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Contract talks currently underway between Unifor and the Big Three U.S. auto manufacturers are being called the most significant in a generation, maybe a half-century. The union has put future investments at the top of its wish list. Underlying it all is that old existential question: does Canada really need an auto industry, especially now that Mexico is such a magnet for new investment?

What we don't know about Canada might hurt us. That's the title of a great article (with a cool gif!) from American economist and blogger Ben Casselman about what happened when the Harper Conservatives cancelled the mandatory long-form Census in June 2010 and replaced it with a voluntary National Household Survey in 2011. What Canadians don't know about ourselves could hurt us too.

History is clear: The Harper government's record on job creation is the weakest of Canada's past nine prime ministers.

But is it the best job creation record we could have right now, given how so many nations are struggling with the enduring impact of the 2008 global economic crisis? When it comes to recovery, are we the best in show in the G7? That depends on what you measure.

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It's only been a couple of weeks since Disney, that most iconic of American companies, moved to displace all its homegrown techies with low-cost foreign temporary workers. But the company had to beat a hasty retreat in the face of an outpouring of criticism.